As downloading of content (e.g., movies, music, books, images, documents, etc.) in digital format becomes increasingly common as a method of content distribution, the issue of securing the content to prevent and/or to identify piracy has become of great concern to content producers (e.g., movie studios, record labels, book publishers, etc.). Traditional media storage devices may include a media security controller to ensure that a host device (e.g., media player) can access a media file in a public partition on the media storage device. Generally, media security controllers lack the capability to implement security features for limiting the rendering of a media item. Conventionally, authorization keys and security are managed by the host device. The host device typically stores the authorization keys to enable decryption and playback of the media file(s). Traditional solutions offer limited security in that if the host device is compromised (e.g., hacked) the authorization keys may be used by other devices, and such attacks are not limited or blocked by media.